28 Feb. - 6 March 2002
Issue No.575
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 28 Feb. - 6 March 2002 Issue No.575 |
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Resistance is not a symbol
Pseudo-statehood is not doing much for the Palestinians. Nor is Europe's once kufiyyeh-clad left, writes Azmi Bishara*
In an attempt to keep alive its republican legacy of nationalism, France has voiced repeated concerns about US cultural and political dominance, and attempted to prevent major European countries, particularly the United Kingdom and Germany, from jumping on the US bandwagon. France's mutinous mood was noticeable in connection with the Middle East, where it ventured, however half-heartedly, onto a path independent of that mapped by Mitchell and Tenet, hoping that other European powers would follow suit. Mindful that the political ice gets thinner the closer you move to hot climates, France did not claim to have an "initiative," however. That word would have been too likely to annoy the United States, the unchallenged power broker of the Middle East. Such a subversive term would have turned sensitive European stomachs, particularly the German and the British. Even so, Europe, alive with a new generation of once ardent leftists, failed to rise to the French bait.
Surprising? Not really. Germany is at best temperamental, particularly when it comes to Israel. World War II memories may have crippled German foreign policy everywhere, but in the Middle East they have decimated it. Only in the nearby Balkans has Germany tiptoed into anything resembling a foreign policy of its own: it supported the secession of Croatia. The rest is traumatic history.
The United Kingdom, for its part, has no foreign policy to mention apart from toeing the US line. Just as a grandmother is allowed to spend the rest of her days in the loving confines of her son's house, on the condition that the daughter-in-law (Israel in this case) approves, the United Kingdom now lives with the US, and is following the script. Granny leaves the house on her own sometimes for a harmless night of bingo with the other senior citizens down the pub -- within walking political distance from the residence of the powerful son.
In this barren landscape, fleeting moments of liveliness occur, their significance residing in their minute scope and fleeting impact. Some of the characters associated with French- inspired European forays into the Middle East political wasteland illustrate this point.
Hubert Vedrine, the French foreign minister, made some low-key, sensible protests against George W Bush's "axis of evil" remarks. The French minister, however timidly, challenged the ubiquity of Tenet's and Mitchell's ideas and other certitudes of US Middle East policy. Now, Vedrine is no raving radical. He is a seasoned politician, a close associate of the late President Mitterrand, a man with no revolutionary past. He is mainstream, a shade conservative, and he spoke out.
UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw is exactly the opposite. He stands for the radical left of the Labour Party. Conservatives used to malign his die-hard radicalism in order to discredit Labour. And what has he done? He dismissed France's views on the Middle East. He came all the way to Ramallah to declare his resounding support for the US position on terror.
He is not the only one. Joschka Fischer, the German foreign minister with the scruffy-chic past, grew up in Frankfurt, and once came close to being charged with terror for his close links with the radical left. As an opposition parliamentarian, he was repeatedly assailed by conservatives worried about his extreme "radicalism." One of his close associates, Otto Schily, left the Greens to join ranks with the socialists just before he became interior minister. Now, Schily's security policies and impatience with foreigners living in Germany embarrass even his right-wing associates.
Something must be wrong with the left-right politicians. In comparison, conventional, moderate right-wing politicians have been more benign to the Palestinian cause. The born- again European conservatives, atoning for their leftist past, are the most depressingly ardent advocates of US-style politics.
The morality of the former left-wingers is unstable, to say the least. Rebellion followed by conservatism raises serious ethical problems. Perhaps people should change tack from time to time. But for some reason, going from one extreme to the other muddies one's moral perspective. Europe's doctrinal turncoats have no qualms about dabbling in the Palestinian question, with devastating effect. People who once manned the barricades, marched in protest, dressed in jeans and Palestinian kuffiyehs and basked in the glow of solidarity with Third World causes are now trying to be "objective" (and we all know what that means) about the Palestinians.
Perhaps the Palestinian problem becomes too baffling after a mid-course ideological somersault? Perhaps the Jewish question is dearer to Europe's heart than the suffering of the Palestinians? Yet this is morality turned upside down. Sympathy with present-day Palestinians should come from the same moral source that provoked sympathy for Jewish suffering in the first place. Israel has no monopoly on the truth.
Europe's reformed left equates Zionist schemes with Jewish aspirations, and views the latter as fundamentally incompatible with the Palestinian struggle. The problem, thus formulated, becomes difficult to resolve. Perhaps this is why the German foreign minister, addressing an EU gathering in Brussels after his return from the region, opined that the parties involved are not mature enough to accept a political solution. What has not matured, rather, is Europe's reformed left.
Occupation is a simple matter. Everyone knows what it is and what should be done about it. The point seems to have been lost on this new breed of well-dressed, young European officials and their equally trendy coterie of journalists and TV anchors -- many former leftists. Meanwhile, old-fashioned, conservative, pragmatic politicians seem to have retained a more focused view of events in this region.
The Palestinians have renounced statelessness to enjoy the dubious honour of pseudo-statehood. They have forsworn national liberation for the sake of a state minus sovereignty and citizens' rights. Some are acting as if they belonged to the peace movement in the occupying nation, not to the liberation movement of a nation under occupation. We have a pseudo- state, a quasi-peace movement, and a make-believe gaggle of ministers and senior officials. None of our goals have been achieved. Our eclectic democracy survives on a diet of heavy- handed, exclusivist pluralism. Our token democrats, busy and proud, operate in the political vacuum of semi-statehood. And once they have a real, sovereign state, we are told, they will deal magnanimously with their opponents.
We have no shortage of token writers, a semblance of literature, a modicum of intellectual life -- just enough to allow peace-lovers and equality advocates everywhere to converse with the Palestinians once in a while. We even have universities that pretend to function; and we get peace awards -- loads of them. Each time an Israeli -- anyone who ever spoke out on behalf of the Palestinians or signed a peace document -- receives a peace award, a Palestinian is treated to an equal honour. We don't have peace, but we do have promises. As far as symbols are concerned, we are in top shape.
There is life, however, beyond the land of symbols. There is genuine thinking and literature to which people can relate and from which they can derive meaning. There is resistance. And resistance is not a symbol. It makes symbols, good and bad. It can make peace; and it can make people who pretend to make peace.
*The writer is a Palestinian member of the Israeli Knesset.
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